US-Mexican border is essentially wide open, US immigration laws are unenforced, politicians want Latin Americans to fundamentally transform US. One step over the border and everything is free-Victor Davis Hanson, Am. Greatness…(Note to Venezuelans: US taxpayers have yet to see “transition to democracy” or rule of law in US)

A scheduled asylum hearing, in turn, is seen by border crossers as a mere formality to be ignored. The popular perception on the border, then, is to stick one foot illegally onto U.S. soil, and, presto, win permanent residence for you and any family members who wish to follow.

Some polls in the past have suggested that a third of Mexico’s population would immigrate to the United States if possible. The percentages of would-be immigrants from Central America are likely to be even higher. In theory, 50 million could cross the border in the next two decades, which poses the question: what are the theoretical limits on illegal immigration?

When would it cease? When 50 million or 60 million or maybe 80 million foreign nationals entered illegally, without meritocratic criteria or much diversity?…

Saturation Nowhere in Sight

Mass population movements end (or never start) if there is border symmetry, in the fashion that Canadian and American immigrants roughly balance each other out.

No one knows what the saturation point might be of illegal and unassimilated immigration, but influxes are now approximating each month a mid-sized American city. In theory, we may already be nearing a point where many immigrants are starting to see their new homes as not all that different from Mexico—although in general far more expensive.

How Illegal Immigration Changes Us

Illegal immigration and its effects on a community are incremental but steady. This past week, two miles from my home, an illegal alien fled the scene of an accident that he had caused, which killed a pregnant Mexican-American and critically injured her 11-year-old daughter. He is still at large. Within a 100-mile radius of central California, at least five citizens were killed by illegal alien gunmen in the last four months. When I go to town to drop off dry cleaning, I rarely hear English spoken. Almost all the stores in the shopping center (where I have gone for 50 years) have Spanish names. Few English signs are apparent or needed.

The formerly rich diverse community of Japanese-, Armenian-, Basque-, Portuguese-, Mexican- and Scandinavian-Americans have long since vanished. I stopped riding a bike in my rural environs four years ago, given the packs of unlicensed and unvaccinated dogs, and the owners indifference to their attacks on passersby….

The avenue where I have lived for 65 years in terms of the fundamental metrics of civilization—sanitation, single-family zoning, building codes, mosquito abatement, dog licensing and registration, and sanctions for illicit activity—has regressed a half-century or more.

Officials apparently assume that visiting these places can become a lose-lose-lose situation: the miscreant will not comply with citations, the bureaucratic costs of enforcement are not offset by collectable fines, and the touchy subject of illegal immigration may earn either unfavorable press coverage or censure from politically sensitive county and local officials. In other words, we are a world away from Nancy Pelosi’s gated Napa estate, or Dianne Feinstein’s $40 million hilltop Pacific Heights mansion but not from the results of their ideology.

Future Without Law

Life down the street is conducted mostly on the premises of rural Mexico, where one does what one pleases or must in terms of water, power, sanitation, business, commerce, leisure, and pets, without audit from authorities.

If one reads either the local or regional papers, it is composed of stories about one of three themes.

Two, there are also many human interest inspirational stories of illegal aliens from Mexico who are running successful businesses, whose children are star athletes or students. The subtext is not that they are doing the exceptional things other Americans are not doing, but that they merit special attention and approbation because of their immigrant status and the obstacles they have overcome.

But no one wishes to have a neighbor who is an MS-13 member, or schools where non-English speakers hold back collective learning, or to be hit by an unlicensed driver who flees the scene. For successfully assimilated Hispanics there is a growing resentment that they are being used to support political agendas that are not conducive to improving the quality of life in their own backyards.

In sum, either when Mexico resembles California, Texas, Arizona, or New Mexico, or when these border states resemble Mexico, then illegal immigration will likely cease. Conventional wisdom has always postulated that declining birth rates, economic reforms, and globalization south of the border will discourage Mexicans and Central Americans from coming north as rough parity is achieved.

But it may be that as so many have already come north—and they are coming in increasing numbers—and as so few feel a need to assimilate, that an impoverished “north” is no longer a promised land and thus not necessarily a place for which it is worth abandoning one’s homeland.”…image above via American Greatness

While VDH briefly mentions Central Americans, he seems to postulate that today´s invaders are primarily from Mexico and makes no mention of the Africans, Middle Easterners, or the citizens of over 40 other foreign nations, many of them hostile to the U.S. Like other conservative authors on the topic, he assumes that Americans can only hunker down and hope that our elected politicians can somehow stem the tide.